Random names for cities

[beccaelizabeth]

I was poking the internet for a map maker to make a fantasy city in and found some random generators that make the map for you instead. Also one that tells you what's in all the buildings. And a table for making random English-ish city names.
http://inkwellideas.com/worldbuilding/random-or-not-city-name-charts/englishunited-kingdom-cities/

I don't think it's quite right though. It splits up -er to be an ending on its own, instead of being part of caster cester chester. That's like writing cas in one column and tle in another.
... wait, they actually did that too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place_names_in_the_United_Kingdom_and_Ireland
has a bunch of parts of places names, tagged as prefix or suffix, and also by language group, so if your fantasy world has no romans you can leave the roman parts out.
So now I want to make another table out of those parts instead.

English place name generator

Dice roll	Prefix	Suffix
1	Aber	avon
2	Ast	ay
3	Axe	beck
4	Ball	burn
5	Brad	bury
6	Caer	by
7	Cheap	caster
8	Dal	coombe
9	Din	cot
10	Drum	dale
11	Dum	den
12	Fin	ey
13	Gill	field
14	Holm	firth
15	Hope	ford
16	Kil	foss
17	Kin	gate
18	Lang	garth
19	Moss	glen
20	Nor	ham
21	Pen	howe
22	Pit	ing
23	Pol	low
24	Pont	ley
25	Ship	market
26	Stan	mere
27	Stow	minster
28	Strath	mouth
29	Sud	ness
30	Swin	pool
31	Tre	port
32	Tun	shaw
33	Whel	stead
34	Win	thorpe
35	Low	thwaite
36	West	toft
37	Inver	ton
38	New	wold
39	Spring	wich
40	Old	wick
41	High	wood
42	Fall	worth

... except that is a very long table and wouldn't random roll well even if you had enough dice. Plus you'd end up with weird combinations of parts from different geography. Drawing board time...

Also, since it's made of common parts, it's easy to make places that actually exist.
Though you'd get Lowtoft instead of Lowestoft. 
And sometimes you'd need to tweak repeated letters out of the way.

No random generator will give you Wymondham though.  Maybe Windam, which is what it sounds like.  ... not this one though, there's only Winham.

Comments

[baronjanus]

Thanks for the links and thoughts.

Listen, did you find any good/pretty map generators/makers in your search? Can I has?

[beccaelizabeth]

I found
http://www.inkwellideas.com/roleplaying_tools/random_city/
which has a version 2 my security settings won't let me try and links to a bunch of others, some of them kickstarter or for money versions with bells and whistles.
and
http://citygen.crystalballsoft.com/
which isn't a map but has lots of rpg useful data and goes with a free e23 pdf that I haven't had time to read yet.

Don't know if good/pretty but that was all I found yesterday. If you find prettier pls link :-)

[baronjanus]

Thanks :)

If I find, I will, but I don't have time to search these days. I'll keep you in mind for next time I go scavenging about the internet :)

[baronjanus]

...Though if you're just looking for text and not visual, chaoticshiny is a good place.

[baronjanus]

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/ootp-mods-names-nations/199955-city-name-generator.html